Wireless carrier Verizon is also in the market for eyeballs

Verizon says that its business is evolving beyond wireless services by collecting data on its network users that can be marketed to other companies.

Verizon says that its business is evolving beyond wireless services...

NEW YORK - Verizon has long been known as a home phone and wireless service provider. But it's evolving to make more money by tracking what we watch and read on our phones.

About two-thirds of U.S adults now carry smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center, suggesting to some analysts that the market is peaking. But we're spending more time on our pocket screens - about two-and-a-half hours per day this year, on average, compared to less than an hour in 2011, according to market research firm eMarketer. Magna Global, a unit of advertising firm IPG, predicts that digital media ad sales will grow 62 percent this year on mobile.

So Verizon is preparing its next act by beefing up its advertising and media business. It spent $4.4 billion earlier this year to snap up AOL, which runs a digital-ad business as well as big Internet sites such as TechCrunch and the Huffington Post. It has also started tracking its mobile users' Internet surfing and other online behavior via controversial identifying code called "supercookies."

Industry analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson said in a research note Tuesday that Verizon's "next big growth engine" is customer data. "Verizon is turning its attention to its vast trove of information about the comings and goings of its 100 million wireless users," he wrote. "Their goal is to reinvent the advertising business."

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Verizon's traditional business is still doing just fine. The New York-based company said Tuesday that third-quarter revenue rose 5 percent to $33.2 billion, while net income climbed 9.9 percent to $4.17 billion.

It now deploys its "supercookie" tracking code, which individuals can't readily block on their own, to easily follow the way people use apps and surf the Web on Verizon phones.